Friday May 19, 2017

People wanted to know if Linux distros would run on Windows 10 S, and that answer is a strict "No!" A Microsoft blogger reminds us that just because an app can be downloaded from the Windows Store, doesn’t mean that it’s appropriate for W10 S. This is especially true for command-line apps, shells and Consoles.

Linux distro store packages are an exotic type of app package that are published to the Windows Store by known partners. Users find and install distros safely, quickly, and reliably via the Windows Store app. Once installed, however, distros should be treated as command-line tools that run outside the UWP sandbox & secure runtime infrastructure. They run with the capabilities granted to the local user---in the same way as Cmd and PowerShell do. This is why Linux distros don’t run on Windows 10 S: Even though they’re delivered via the Windows Store, and installed as standard UWP APPX’s, they run as non-UWP command-line tools and this can access more of a system than a UWP can.